Capitalising
on the popularity of the late Roahl Dahl, here are three 28-page books with
coloured illustrations and plenty of exercises for the budding young writer.
‘How to write tremendous characters’ is the aim of Roald Dahl’s Creative Writing with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, while Roald Dahl’s Creative Writing with the BFG focuses
on how to write splendid settings and how to write spellbinding

speech is the
focus of Roald Dahl’s Creative Writing
with Matilda.

In the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the
exercises listed in the content’s page include backstory, heroes and villains,
speech and dialogue, caring about characters and through each other’s eyes.
Thus, the young person attempting the many exercises in this attractively
presented book with fill-in boxed spaces, is told such this as how to give
opinions and write news reports, how to create likable characters or what
speech can reveal about a character.

In this
book’s section on words and pictures, the reader is asked to look at
illustrations and to use adjectives to create a picture. Some exercises relate
to characters in Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory (matching adjectives with Charlie Bucket, Veruca

Salt,
Augustus Gloop, etc), while there is also an exercise in creating a character
(Choose a title, such as Dr or Lord), think of a first name and choose or
invent a surname). The reader is then asked to make up full names for
characters, such as a rich woman, a funny teacher and an elegant king. Then the
reader is asked to make up names for Oompa-Loompas and to create dangerous
beasts that might live in Loompaland. (An accompanying Ideas Box provides a
vocabulary list such as ‘weasel’, ‘swoop’ and ‘pilfer’.

Thus, for
each of the books, the young reader is asked to know the contents of Dahl’s
book and to use this information creatively. And, too, there are exercises
which rely on the reader’s imagination as Dahl certainly did.

These books
are recommended to inspire and help budding young writer (teachers might also get some
terrific ideas as well!)